BMW Recalling 350,000 Cars for Brake Problems

BMW Recalling 350,000 Cars for Brake Problems
Copyright By REUTERS
Published: October 1, 2010
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/02/business/global/02recall.html?hpw


PARIS (Reuters) — The German carmaker BMW said Friday that it was voluntarily recalling 350,000 cars worldwide because of a possible brake problem that has not caused any accidents.

“In some cars brake fluid has leaked into the hydraulics, preventing pressure from building up. The customer notices this since he needs to apply more pressure to the brake, but the brakes still work,” a company spokesman said on Friday.

The chief financial officer, Friedrich Eichiner, said that he did not expect repairs to require great technical effort but he did not yet have an estimate on how much the recall would cost.

BMW’s problem, which tended to occur among vehicles with high mileage, was discovered in models equipped with the 8- and 12-cylinder engines popular in the United States.

Around 345,000 BMW 5, 6 and 7 Series models built since 2002 are being recalled worldwide. Of that, almost 200,000 are in the United States.

A spokesman for BMW’s luxury brand Rolls-Royce said the company was unaware of any problems so far in its Phantom models that use 12-cylinder engines exclusively. Rolls-Royce customers tend to own many cars and hence mileage is typically much lower.

Nevertheless, Rolls-Royce will ask all 5,800 Phantom customers to bring their vehicles to a garage for inspection.

“No Rolls-Royce Ghosts were impacted,” the spokesman said.

BMW’s move is not a recall in the strictest sense, a term generally reserved for a compulsory measure required by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, often in conjunction with serious safety issues.

A recall can become a public relations disaster if the automaker is perceived to be reluctant to report a defect. Toyota paid the safety agency a record $16.4 million after officials accused it of not immediately reporting a problem with “sticky” gas pedals. Toyota denied any wrongdoing, and said it was trying to avoid an expensive legal case.